


One Foot Forward, Six Feet Down

by meverri



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Death In Dream, Don't worry y'all it was during a cycle we're all good, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Light Angst, Nightmares, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 07:42:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14039445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meverri/pseuds/meverri
Summary: Barry has nightmares. Luckily, Lup is there to help.





	One Foot Forward, Six Feet Down

Ultimately, it always comes back to the nightmares.

A hundred years of deaths to cycle through, but Barry’s mind nearly always goes back to the same one- year 62, the one where the world was crisscrossed with mineshafts so long and dark it felt like they must go all the way through to the center of the world. The inhabitants hadn’t been inhospitable, per se, but they hadn’t exactly been helpful when it came to tracing down the Light.

Barry and Lup had set out fairly early on to try to find their way to nearby villages through the long-abandoned mineshafts. There were very few overland routes that weren’t crawling with monsters- for some reason, in this world, monsters preferred the sunlight to the darkness of the mines- and Davenport and Merle had flown everyone to various towns across the world with the same mission: find another civilization that was more willing to talk.

After four long months of travel, Barry and Lup had been largely unsuccessful. Through small communication devices that they had purchased at the beginning of the year, they learned that Taako and Magnus had found one child who had potentially seen the Light fall somewhere to the east, but it was a long shot at best, and Davenport, Merle, and Lucretia had found nothing in the southwest. That left Barry and Lup in the north, spending days picking their way through half-collapsed mineshafts and across rotten bridges.

It was another day of picking through old shitty rocks when Lup shone her light on an old rusty lever. 

“Ooh,” she said, raising an eyebrow and grinning. “Look, babe. A mystery.”

Barry shone his light around the lever. It didn’t seem to be connected to any obvious mechanisms.

“Should we pull it?” he asked, shining his light across the ceiling to check for wires.

Lup shrugged. “It might not do anything. Or it might be a trap.” She looked back at Barry, her eyes bright in the light hovering gently above them, and laughed. “Pull the lever, Kronk!”

It was moments like these that Barry had fallen in love with- Lup, in a dangerous but mind-bogglingly boring situation, making jokes and acting like a goofball. With one hand pointed at the lever, she looked like a painting of a brave adventurer on the bow of a ship or the edge of a cliff.

Still, Barry hesitated. It didn’t feel safe. In the dream, Barry always hesitates the same way he did in the real world. Had he not pulled the lever, Lup might have lived through that cycle. In the dreams, sometimes, he draws his hand back and Lup frowns, disappointed, and they continue into the endless darkness. 

But in real life, he pulled it. The lever disintegrated in his palm. Lup sighed.

“Wrong lever,” Barry said, loud enough that it echoed down the cave.

And there was his mistake, one that he would contemplate often over the next couple of months. Yes, the monsters preferred the surface to the shafts, and, granted, neither he nor Lup had ever seen any other travelers in the darkness. But he should have known the darkness hid something sinister- after all, hadn’t he seen darkness itself destroy countless worlds?

So, as his voice echoed down the chamber in one of the dumbest jokes he would ever make, Barry heard the sound of machinery activating and saw, for just a moment, a glimpse of light reflecting off of thick glasses in the distance.

There was no time to react. A loud boom echoed through the cave, shaking the very ground they stood upon. Barry watched in horror as a huge cloud of dust billowed out of the ceiling and instantly snuffed out Lup’s light. Left in complete darkness, the rest was just sounds- rocks falling and crashing and crumbling, and, worse, nothing from Lup.

When the rocks quieted down, Barry immediately cast another Light. Centuries of dust still hung in the air, rendering his spell mostly useless, but still he knelt down upon the piles of rock in front of him.

“Lup!” he shouted, reaching his hands into the cracks between two rocks and doing his best to tug them out of place.

It would be almost ten minutes of painstaking work before he would hear her, weakly spitting his name around the layers of rock.

“Barry?”

And this was where the nightmares diverged from his memories. In reality, it had been three hours of painful digging before he was able to get to Lup, and within another hour she had succumbed to unconsciousness. He never managed to get her to the surface. The whole time she was buried, Lup barely managed more than a weak whisper.

In dreams, though, Lup screams. He gets impossible glances of her face, bruised and bloody, before she disappears once more below the rocks. Monstrous vultures pick at her hands when they emerge, forcing her to pull ever deeper into the dust.

“I’m trying to help,” Barry cries, swatting at the birds as though it will do anything, but still they stay, and Barry never, ever, frees Lup.

So it makes sense if he awakens crying, some nights, or swatting at something that doesn’t exist. If, on those nights, he tries to bite off his screams where they emerge from his mouth. If he does his best to avoid waking Lup as she sleeps next to him, her hands closed in fists around his tee shirts. 

It’s the same tonight. Lup’s blonde hair spills across her pillow as Barry forces himself to sit up and takes gulps of air, rubbing sweat from over his left eye. There are tears streaming down his face, so he tries to wipe those away too, tries to take slower, deeper breaths to avoid waking Lup, but it’s all in vain. She sits up slowly, her hand wandering up his arm, warm and soft.

“Babe?” she mumbles, and as Barry turns to face her he sees her eyes are heavy-lidded and barely open. She blinks once, then opens her eyes a bit wider.

“I’m fine,” Barry says quietly as Lup puts one hand on his cheek and pulls his forehead to rest against hers. “Just a nightmare.”

She sighs. “I know.” She plants a single, gentle kiss on the edge of his lips.

Barry’s hand finds its way to her chest, searching for her warm heartbeat against her soft breast. When he finds it, he takes the first real breath of air he has since he awoke. Proof of life.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice breaking. “In the mine-”

Lup kisses him again, more firmly this time. “Babe, don’t,” she says, wrapping her arms around him. “It’s over now. It’s been over for years. I’m not leaving you alone ever again.”

And then Barry sobs, because he knows it’s true, and Lup pulls his head to the crook of her neck and runs her fingers through his thinning hair. It’s strange and shocking, seeing the signs of aging after all this time, but here’s Lup, next to him, and they’re safe. Everyone is safe, now.

They stay like that for a while, holding each other until they’re both too tired to stay awake, and then Barry pulls Lup onto his chest and plays with her hair until she’s sound asleep, her chest rising and falling against his side. As sleep pulls him in, Barry presses a gentle kiss to the top of Lup’s curls.

They stay like that, peacefully, until morning.


End file.
